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A LETTER 



TO THE 



EIGHT REV. L. SILLIMAN IVES, 

BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA; 

OCCASIONED BY HIS LATE ADDRESS TO THE CONVENTION OF HIS DIOCESE. 

/ 

BY WILLIAM JAY. 



THIRD EDITION. 






$ta Dork: 

WILLIAM HARNED, 22 SPRUCE STREET 



184S 



. 



NOTICE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

The following letter has been heretofore published under the signa- 
ture of « A Protestant Episcopalian." A new edition being calledfor, 
the writer has yielded to the advice of his friends, in giving it under 
his own name. He has no idea that he will thus add any weight 
whatever to his arguments ,■ but he does hope that the confidence of the 
reader in the accuracy of the facts, and the fidelity of the quotations, 
will be strengthened by the author's acknowledgment of his responsi- 
bility for them. 

It has been often alleged that Anti-slavery writers exaggerate and 
misrepresent the character of American slavery. If the charge be 
true, their conduct is no less foolish than immoral ; for when the con- 
fessions of the accused are superabundant and overwhelming, it is 
gratuitous wickedness to suborn witnesses. It will be observed that 
the only testimony on which the writer has relied, is that voluntarily 
given by Southern witnesses ; and he is utterly unconscious of having 
perverted or colored it in the slightest degree. 

Feb. 7, 1848. 



A LETTER 



TO THE RIGHT REV. L. SILLIMAN IVES, 

BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE STATE OF 
NORTH CAROLINA, 



Right Reverend Sir : 

History tells us of a certain Bishop who was taken prisoner 
in battle, while fighting against the King of France. The Pope, 
indignant that a prelate of the church should be held as a 
captive, demanded his instant liberation. To this mandate the 
King replied by sending his Holiness the Bishop's blood-stained 
armor, with the words of Scripture, " This have we found ; 
know now, whether it be thy son's coat or no." 

And surely the ambassador of Him who came to preach de- 
liverance to the captive, and liberty to them that are bruised, as 
effectually disguises and denies holy office, when he chants 
the praises of Slavery, with all its inseparable and unutterable 
abominations, as when he arrays himself in the garment of the 
warrior, and participates in the work of human butchery. _ Of 
all the Bishops of the Church, you alone aspire to the champion- 
ship of human bondage. Your brother of Texas reposes on the 
laurels he has won in the service of the slaveholders. Others of 
your Reverend and Right Reverend brethren are content to 
enjoy the unrequited toils of trWr bondmen, without provoking 
the attention of the public to the descrepancy between their 
religion and their practice. You alone throw down the gauntlet 
to the whole of Christendom beyond the slave region. It was not 



enough that you had already endorsed with the whole weight of 
your episcopal influence the frantic assertions, that " no men 

NOR SET OF MEN IN OUR DAY, UNLESS THEY CAN PRODUCE 
A NEW REVELATION FROM HEAVEN, ARE ENTITLED TO PRO- 
NOUNCE SLAVERY WRONG," and that " SLAVERY, AS IT EX- 
ISTS AT THE PRESENT DAY, IS AGREEABLE TO THE ORDER OF 

Divine Providence ;" you must introduce the subject into 
the council of your church, and entertain your convention 
with a picture of the blessedness of North Carolina slaves, and 
with sneers at the wailing of your fellow Christians over their 
" imaginary" suffering. Should we seek for the cause of your 
peculiar ultraism in behalf of human chattelism, we should pro- 
bably find it in the tendency of human nature, under a change 
of position, to vibrate from one extreme to the other ; and 
which is exemplified in the proverbial cruelty and arrogance of 
the slave, when elevated to the post of driver. Had you, when 
preparing for the ministry among your native hills of New .York, 
been told that the day would come when you would claim to 
hold your fellow men as bondmen by the grace of God, and 
would scoff at the sufferings of Southern slaves, the answer of 
Hazael to the prophet would have trembled on your lips. 

Your late address to the convention of your diocese contained 
the following extraordinary passages : 

"From this place I went, by the request of my friend, Josiah Collins, 
Esq., directly to the estates on Lake Scuppernong, which had been with- 
out stated ministerial services for the greater part of the year. Here, and 
in the neighboring parish at Pettigrew's chapel, I passed the remainder 
part of the season of Lent, holding daily services, delivering lectures, 
and commencing a new course of oral catechetical instructions to the 
servants. This course is to embrace the prominent events and truths of 
the Old and New Testaments, as connected with man's fall and re- 
demption, and is designed to follow the oral catechism I have already 
published. The services here were of the most gratifying character, 
fully justifying all that has been said and anticipated of the system 
of religious training heretofore pursued on these plantations. When 
I saw master and servants standing side by .side in the holy services 
of Passion week — when I saw all secular labor on these plantations 
suspended on Good Friday, and the cleanly clad multitude thronging 
the house of prayer, to pay their homage to a crucified Savior — and 
when I saw, on the blessed Easter morn, the master with his goodly 
number of servants kneeling with reverent hearts and devout thanks- 
givings to take the bread of life at the same altar — I could not but in- 
dulge the hope that ere long my spirit may be refreshed by such scenes 



in every part of my diocese ; while T could not help believing that, 
had some of our brethren of other lands been present, they would 
have be"en induced to change the note of their wailing over imaginary 
suffering, into the heartfelt exclamation, ' Happy are the people that 
are in such a case ; yea, blessed are the people who have the Lord for 
their God.' 

" Often, at such times, have I wished for the presence of my friend 
the good Bishop of Oxford, as I have felt assured that, could he but 
once witness what it is my happiness to witness, though in a too im- 
perfect state, his manly heart would prompt him to ask instant pardon 
of the American church, for his having spoken so harshly upon a sub- 
ject which he so imperfectly understood ; and that he would perceive 
that his Christian sympathy might find a much more natural vent in 
efforts to remove the cruel oppressions of the factory system in his 
own country, and his Christian indignation a much more legitimate 
object of rebuke in the English churchmen who have helped to rivet 
that system upon their land." 

If ever truth is peculiarly obligatory, it is when a Bishop, 
actinc in his high and holy office, addresses a council of the 
church of God. We are here informed that our brethren of 
other lands have raised a "note of wailing over IMAGINARY 
suffering ;" and the context forbids us to understand the ex- 
pression in any other sense than a solemn official declaration 
that Southern slavery is unattended with real actual suffering ! ! ! 
The assurance is also avowed, that had the Bishop of Oxford 
witnessed the scenes at Scuppernong, he would have been prompt- 
ed to ask instant pardon of the American church, for having 
spoken so harshly upon a subject which he so imperfectly under- 
stood. Such an assurance is no less wonderful than unwar- 
ranted. The subject on which the Bishop is accused of having 
spoken harshly, and without understanding it, is American 
slavery, and the support afforded it by the American church. 

Your address, sir, is the first response made to the Bishop of 
Oxford's reproof of the American church. So long as it was 
hoped the reproof would be suppressed in this country, a most 
profound silence was observed respecting it. Scarcely an 
Episcopalian in the country seemed to know that the history of 
his church had been written by an eminent English divine. 
But no sooner is an extract from his history published, bearing 
upon the horrors of Southern slavery, and the delinquencies of 
our Bishops and Clergy respecting it, than you think proper to 
represent him as imperfectly acquainted with the subject, and 
profess to believe that, if better informed, he would ask instant 



pardon of the church for what he had written.* It is to he 
regretted, sir, that you found it inexpedient to specify the alleged 
suffering which you pronounce imaginary, or to point out a sin- 
gle mistake into which your good brother of Oxford has fallen, 
and which would tend in any degree to verify your charge against 
him, of imperfectly understanding his subject. But, sir, there 
are writers against whom you, a Northern man, will not think 
it decorous to bring a similar charge. The following witnesses, 
you will perceive, differ from you as to the blessedness of South- 
ern slavery, and dare to call it wrong, without waiting fipr a new 
revelation from Heaven. 

Washington : — " Your late purchase of an estate in the colony of 
Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous 
and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God alike spirit might 
diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country." — 
Letter to Lafayette, 10th May, 1786. 

Jefferson : — " Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, 
when we have removed the only firm basis — a conviction in the 
minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God — that they 
are not to be violated but with his wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for my 
country when I reflect that God is just ; that his justice cannot sleep 
for ever ; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, 
a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is 
among possible events; that it may become possible by supernatural 
interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side 
with us in such a contest."— Notes on Virginia. 

Madison : — " Many circumstances at the present moment seem to 

concur in brightening the prospects of the Society, and cherishing the 

hope that the time will come when the dreadful calamity which has so 

long afflicted our country, and filled so many with despair, will be 

gradually removed." — Letter to American Colonization Society, 29th 

December, 1831. 

/^Monroe: — " We have found that this evil (slavery) has preyed 

/ upon the very vitals of the community, and has been prejudicial to all 

( the States in which it has existed"— Speech in Virginia Convention. 

William Pinkney: — "It is really matter of astonishment to me, 

* No doubt, the whole church of England might with equal propriety be 
called to ask pardon of her American daughter, as it is to be hoped every 
one of her Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, most cordially concurs in the pro- 
priety and justice of the Bishop of Oxford's reproof. The Bishop of Nor- 
wich, in a letter of 19th October, 1840, to an American gentleman who 
had furnished him with certain papers, including portions of Freeman's 
Sermon, and Bishop Ives's endorsement of it, remarks : " I have always 
considered it as an anomaly, tint any State professing Christianity. could 
for a moment tolerate a tyranny so utterly at variance with every feeling 
of justice and humanity, but 1 never could have believed that any indi- 
viduals existed, calling themselves ministers of the gospel, whose minds were 
so darkened by prejudice and self-interest as to avow an approval of slavery 
and its evil consequences, had I not found them so unequivocally confirmed 
in the documents above mentioied." 



that the people of Maryland do not blush a. the very name of freedom 
Not content with exposing to the world, for near a century, a speaking 
picture of abominable oppression, they are still ingenious to prevent 
the hand of generosity from robbing it of half its horrors."— Speech 
on Slavery in Maryland House of Delegates, 1789. 

Patrick Henry :— " It is a debt we owe the purity ot our religion, 
to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery." 
— Letter to A. Bcnezet. 

Manumission Society of North Carolina :— " In the eastern parts 
of the State, the slaves considerably outnumber the free population. 
Their situation there is wretched beyond description. Impoverished by 
the mismanagement which we have already attempted to describe, the 
master, unable to supply his own grandeur and maintain his slaves, 
puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowance, scarcely sufficient 
for their sustenance, so that a great part go half naked and half starved 
much of their time. . . . Generally, throughout the State, the African 
is an abused, a monstrously outraged creature."— Report, 1826. 

John Randolph:—" Sir, I envy neither the head nor the heart of 
that man, from the North, who rises here to defend slavery on prin- 
ciple." — Speech in Congress, 1829. 

Mr Moore :—" Slavery as it exists in Virginia, may be regarded 
as the heaviest calamity which has ever fallen to this portion of the hu- 
man race. One of the evils which arises from it, is the irresistible 
tendency which it has to undermine and destroy everything like virtue 
and morality in the community." — Speech in Virginia Legislature, 1832. 
Thomas M. Randolph :— " It is a practice, and an increasing prac 
tice, in parts of Virginia,'™ rear slaves for market. How can an 
honorable mind, a patriot and a lover of his country, bear to see this 
Ancient Dominion converted into one vast menagerie, where men are 
reared for market like oxen for the shambles:'— Speech in Virginia Le- 
gislature, 1832. . 

Rev. R. J. Breckenridge, of Baltimore:— "What is slavery as it 
exists among us ? We reply, it is that condition, enforced by the 
laws of one halt of the States of this confederacy, in which one por- 
tion of the community, called masters, is allowed such power over 
another portion, called slaves, as — 

"1. To deprive them of the entire earnings of their own labor, 
except only so much as is necessary to continue labor itself, by con- 
tinuing healthv existence — thus committing clear robbery. 

" 2. To reduce them to the necessity of universal concubinage, by 
denying to them the civil rights of marriage— thus breaking up the 
dearesfrelations of life, and encouraging universal prostitution. 

" 3. To deprive them of the means and opportunities of moral and 
intellectual culture; in many States making it a high penal offence to 
teach them to read— thus perpetuating whatever evil there is that pro- 
ceeds from ignorance. 

"4. To set up between parents and their children an authority 
higher than the impulse of nature and the laws of God, which breaks 
up the authority of the father over his own offspring, and at pleasure 
separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child— thus 
abrogating the ch>ar laws of nature, thus outraging all decency and 



justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of 
beings created like themselves in the image of the Most Hijrh God 
This is slavery, as it is daily exhibited in every Slave State "-Afri- 
can Repository, 1834. J 

Synod of Kentucky :-« Brutal stripes, and all the various kinds 
of personal indignities are not the only species of cruelty which 
slavery licenses. The law does not recognise the family relations of 
a slave and extends to him no protection in the enjoyment of dome* 
tic endearments. The members of a slave family may he forcibly 
separated so that they shall never more meet till the final judgment 
and cupidity often induces the masters to practise what the law 

2 vl?" , eFS an , d S1Ste / S ' parentS aml child ren, husbands and 
wives are torn asunder, and permitted to see each other no more 
these acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and 
tne agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim with a trumpet 

tongue, the INIQUITY AND CRUELTY OF OUR SYSTEM. "—Add, CSS 1835 

Henry Clay :— « I consider slavery as a curse— a curse to the 
master -a wrong, a gnevous wrong to the slave. In the abstract, it is 
Hon SpenCl 836° posslble . contin S enc y can make ^ right ."—Coloniza- 

to L^v A hT« ALL T°h f FaU( l ui ^ C0unt y. Virginia :_« Slavery is ruinous 
to the whites. The master has no capital but what is vested in hu- 
Man flesh. The father, instead of being richer for his sons, is at a 
oss to provide for them There is no diversity of occupations, no 
incentive to enterprise Labor of every species is disreputable, because 
performed mostly by slaves. Our towns are stationary, our villages 
almost everywhere declining and the general aspect of the counlry 
marks the curse of a wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have no 
interest in the soil, and care not how much it is impoverished »- 
Speech in Virginia Legislature, 1815. J 



And now, sir, what will you c1b with this host of witnesses, 
which might be indefinitely enlarged? Will you, a Northern 
man, charge these witnesses with an imperfect knowledge of 
slavery? By no means; but you may say of them, quite as 
truly as of the Bishop of Oxford, that, had they only been at 
Scuppernong last Good Friday and Easter Sunday, they would 
have been prompted to ask instant pardon" of the American 
church, for having spoken so harshly of an institution which she 
enjoys, defends, and blesses. 

Warburton, in his Divine Legation (vol II., p. 92), informs 
us that the ancient sages held it lawful and expedient to teach 
one doctrine to the people at large, and an opposite one to a 
select number. Hence the double doctrine of these philosophers 
—the one external, intended for the public, and known as the 
exoteric; the other internal, common to friends and disciples 
and denominated the esoteric. The slaveholders of the present 
day have their double doctrine also ; and to distinguish between 
the exoteric and the esoteric, it is o aly necessary to ascertain 



whether the language used is intended for effect on the north or 
The south side of Mason and Dixon's line. For the purpose of 
illustrating this double doctrine, which an the sequel will be 
found very useful in explaining the spiritual phenomena wit- 
nessed at Scuppernong, I will call your attention to the exoteric 
teachings of those distinguished sages Governors Hayno and 
Hammond, both within a -few years chief magistrates of South 
Carolina. The former, in his message to the Legislature, in 
1833, thus speaks to the South Carolina lawgivers, but only tor 
the-purpose of being overheard by the people of the North : 

"It is a remarkable fact, that even during the revolutionary war 
when the State was overrun by a barbarous enemy marching open > 
Tndev the banner of emancipation, our domestics could not bejeducd 
fVom then- masters, but proved a source of strength, and not of weak- 
ness, to the country." ' 

Governor Hayne, no doubt, adopted the maxim of the Grecian 
philosophers, that truth and utility do.not always coincide ; tor 
he was of course, too well informed in the history of his native 
State not to have been conscious that the u remarkable tact 
thus officially announced was an impudent invention ot his own_ 
Let us listen to the testimony borne by history to the fidelity ot 
South Carolina domestics, and the strength they yielded to the 
country during the revolutionary war : 

" March °9 1799 —The committee appointed to take into considera- 
tion the circumstances of the Southern States, and the ways and means 
for their safety and defence, report : That the State o South Cako- 
lina (as represented by the delegates of said State, and by Mr Huger, 
who lias come hither, at the request of the Governor of said State, on 
purpose to explain the peculiar circumstances thereof) is unable to 
make any effectual efforts with the militia, by reason of the great pro- 
portion of citizens necessary to remain at home to prevent insurrection 
among the negroes, and prevent their desertion to the enemy. —Secret 
Journal of Congress, vol. II., p. 105. c„ TIT „ 

« The iie-roes seduced and taken Irom the inhabitants of South 
Carolina in the course of the war, remained subject to the disposal 
of the enemy. They were successively shipped to the West Indies, 
and it is asserted, on the authority of the best informed citizens of 
South Carolina, that more than twenty thousand slaves were lost 
to the State in consequence of the war.»-CoZ. H. Lees Memoirs of 
the Revolutionary War in the Southern Department, vol. 11., p. 45b. 

Dr Ramsay was a native of South Carolina, and in 1S09, 
published his History of the State, in the city of Charleston. Is 
it to be believed that the Governor had never heard ot the lol- 
lowing facts recorded by the historian ? Speaking of the cam- 
paign of 1779, Ramsay tells us : 

" The forces under the command of General Provost marched 



Africans allured ^S^^^^^^k ^ ^ 
repaired in great numbers, to the oval arm J Thi 7™°' f° d 
recommend themselves to their ne7 m a s S bv i K" ,ld ? avore 1 ? to 
their owners had concealed their nrone^v ' , Y dlscoverin S where 
rying it off"— Vol l, p. 312. pi0 P eitv ' anJ w ere assisting in car- 
Describing the invasion the next year, he says ■ 
,.336 6S E SeC ° nd *"»#** to the British army."-Fo/7., 

hunXLe^en^ol^tbettonr'^!^ ^f^' ^ 
to the royal forces i» New York "JmjpV^ PS ^ pimeen 

yeJ^uU J nil thT S"of J s b o y ,f r H ges ' that bet — th * 

FIVE THOUSAND negroef-V-i-Fo; 2 J^T l0St T *™TY- 

^^l^l^^f -f ^ of slaves, men , 
M nw ,-f, f „ '"UTOTjin feouth Carolina, to be only 107 000 

five companies of ssnlrli"™, +~ , „ ° u ' at tlle head of 

mestics" were soon •,*«,,. ♦,• j • , tnirty-five "do- 

into ^.rvieo^jVw lt r ' ' 'r'\ """ i " M " ; ' "'"" " a "" d 



On a sudden an order came, that all the troop * should he marched 
to the defence of Washington ; and this neck of eighteen miles 
wide was emptied of all its efficient force for nearly six weeks. 
During the absence of the forces there was nothing to restrain 
our slaves, and they flocked in hundreds to the enemy." 

Governor Hammond, another South Carolina sage, address- 
ing the North from the floor of Congress, 1st of February, 1836, 
taught the following exoteric doctrine : 

" Sir, our slaves are a peaceful, kindhearted, and affectionate race 
satisfied with their lot, happy in their comforts, and devoted to their mas- 
ters. It will not be an easy thing to seduce them from their fidelity." 

And now, sir, for a little esoteric doctrine relative to the 
" devotion" of slaves to their masters. Soon after the hanging 
of domestics by dozens in Charleston, a pamphlet appeared 
there, entitled " Reflections Occasioned by the Late Disturb- 
ances in Charleston," attributed to Gen. T. Pinkney. It was 
an essay on the dangers to be apprehended from the slave popu- 
lation, and the means of averting them. Of the " house serv- 
ants" it is said : 

" They are the most dangerous; their intimate acquaintance with 
all the circumstances relating to the interior of the dwellings, the con- 
fidence reposed in them, and the information they unavoidably obtain 
from hearing the conversation and observing the habitual transactions 
of their owners, afford them the most ample means for treacherous 
bloodshed and devastation. The success, therefore, of servile 
conspiracies mainly depends on this class for taking off by midnight 
murder their unsuspecting owners; and the late trials, by exhibiting 
so large a portion of this description among the ringleaders of the 
conspiracy, afford a melancholy proof of their promptitude to become 
actors in such scenes." — Page 14. 

Another pamphlet came out the same year at Charleston, said 
to be from the pen of Edwin C. Holland, Esq., and called "A 
Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and 
Western States." It concluded with the following esoteric 
advice : 

" Let it never be forgotten, that our negroes are truly the Jacobins 
of the country ; that they are the anarchists and the domestic enemy ; 
the common enemy of civilized society ; and the barbarians who would, 
if they could, become the destroyers of our race." 

«' We of the South," says the Maysville (Tennessee) Intelligencer, 
"are emphatically surrounded by a dangerous class of beings — degraded, 
stupid savages— who, if they could but once entertain the idea that 
immediate and unconditional death would not be their portion, would 
re-enact the St. Domingo tragedy." 
1* 



10 

Says the Southern Religious Telegraph: 

" Hatred to the whites, with the exception in some cases of attach- 
ment to the person and family of the master, is nearly universal 
among the black population. We have, then, a foe cherished in our 
own bosoms — a foe willing to draw our life blood whenever the op- 
portunity is offered." 

The slaveholders, when thus cautioning each other against the 
intense hatred felt for them by the slaves, seem never to ask 
themselves, " is there not a cause ?" 

The double doctrine is not confined to the laity ; even the 
olergy occasionally condescend to use it. One of the most 
astonishing specimens of the clerical exoteric to be met with in 
the writings of Southern divines, is furnished by the Rev. J. C. 
Thornton, President of the Centenary College, Clinton, Missis- 
sippi. This gentleman, in a volume entitled an " Inquiry into 
the History of Slavery, 1841," but in reality, a philippic against 
Abolitionists, scoffing at the alleged ignorance of the slaves, 
thus exclaims : 

" They are so ' ignorant' that they are chiefly all in the South mem- 
bers of three or four denominations, Protestant Episcopalians, Pres- 
byterians, Baptists, Methodists ; among all of whom are colored 
ministers of exalted standing, who would honor any pulpit in America. 
When those who are not church members are added to .the above, 
jt will make at least two millions of slaves in regular attendance on 
divine worship."— Pp. 108—110. 

To these specimens of the reverend gentleman's veracity, we 
add one of his refinement. Addressing, in his book, by name, 
two anti-slavery writers at the North, he tells them — 

" Bring forward your son, out with your daughter, and either shall 
have an Angola negro before night." — P. 140. 

As the whole number of slaves, including children, at the last 
census, was rather less than three millions, and at the least two 
millions of these are in regular attendance on divine worship, it 
must be confessed that the slaves are the greatest church-going 
people in the world. " Happy are the people that are in such 
a case." But before indulging in our pious gratulations, let us 
attend to the esoteric teaching on the subject of slave religion. 
In a sermon preached before an association of planters in 
Georgia, by the Rev. C. C. Jones, and published at Savannah, 
1831, we have the following confessions : 

"The description which the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the 
Romans, gives of the heathen world, will apply with very little abate- 
ment, to our negroes. They lie, blaspheme, are slothful, envious, 
malicious, inventors of evil things, deceivers, covenant breakers, im- 
placable, unmerciful. Numbers of the Negroes do not go to church, 



11 

and cannot tel who Jesus Ch:ist is, nor have they ever heard so much 

as the ten commandments read and explained Generally 

speaking, they appear to be without hope, and without God in the 

Win Id A NATION OF HEATHEN IN OUR VERY MIDST." 

Tbe'jreport of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, 
made 5ih December, 1833, and published at Charleston, makea 
the folic ving revelations : 

" Who would credit it, that in these years of revival and benevo- 
lent effort,, in this Christian republic, there are over two millions of 
human behgs in the condition of heathen, and in some respects in a 
worse condition. From long continued and close observation, we 
believe thai their moral and religious condition is such that they may 
justly be considered the heathen of this Christian country, and will 
bear a comparison with heathen in any part of the world. ... It is 
universally tie fact throughout the slaveholding States, that either 
custom or law prohibits them the acquisition of letters, and conse- 
quently they ean have no access to the Scriptures In the vast 

field, extending from an entire State beyond the Potomac to the Sabine 
river, and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, there are, to the best of our 
knowledge, not twelve men exclusively devoted to the religious in- 
struction of the negroes. As to ministers of their own color, they are 
destitute, infinitely, both in point of numbers and qualifications, to say 
nothing of the fact that such a ministry is looked upon with distrust, 
and discountenanced. But do not the negroes have access to the Gos- 
pel through the stated ministry of the whites ? No We ven- 
ture the assertion, that if we take the whole number of ministers in 
the slaveholding States, but a very small portion 'pay any attention to 

them The negroes have no regular and efficient ministry ; as a 

matter of course, no churches; neither is there sufficient room in 
the white churches for their accommodation. We know of but five 
churches in the slaveholding States built expressly for their use. . . . 
We may now enquire if they enjoy the privileges of the Gospel in 
private, in their own houses, or on their own plantations ? Again we 
return a negative answer. They have no Bibles to read at their own 
firesides, they have no family altars ; and, when in affliction and sick- 
ness, or death, they have no minister to address to them the consola- 
tions of the Gospel, nor to bury them with solemn and appropriate 
services." 

Certainly the Rev. President of " Centenary College, Clinton, 
Mississippi," and the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, 
differ somewhat as to the religious character of two millions of 
slaves. According to the one, they are regular attendants on 
divine worship ; according to the other, they are " in the con- 
dition of heathen." According to the one, among the Episco- 
palian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist slaves, there are 
" colored ministers of exalted standing, who would honor any 
pulpit in America." According to the other — " as to ministers 



12 

of their own color, they are destitute infinitely both in point of 
number and qualifications." 

A writer in the Charleston Courier tells us, " There are up- 
wards of 20,000 colored persons in Charleston and on the Neck, 
and there are hut inadequate accommodations and opportunities 
for their attendance on the preaching of the Word of God, by 
admission to galleries in some of our churches ; there being 
many which do not even vouchsafe them that privilege." A 
late writer in the Charleston Mercury, opposing a proposition 
to form colored congregations, remarks : 

" It has been the policy of this State, not to admit the teaching to 
the slaves, either of reading or writing ; we all know why this is so 
No matter from what combination of causes, the result has been pro- 
duced, in this part of the country ' for weal or for wo,' our lives and 
fortunes are indissolubly connected with the preservation of that in- 
stitution, it needed no great scope of argument to satisfy those who 
framed our laws, that the expansion of intellect, the hundred influences 
which education generates, would be very inconsistent with habits of 
obedience, which was the corner stone of the institution." 

Let us now apply this double doctrine to the case of the slave 
Christians of Scuppernong, and see whether we cannot find 
some esoteric revelations which might cause the Bishop of Ox- 
ford to pause a little before he asks pardon for his reproof of 
the American church. 

It seems that, during Lent, you visited certain plantations 
" which had been without stated ministerial services for the 
greater part of the year." In the midst of this destitution of 
the means of grace, you appeared on the ground, and " com- 
menced"— for it appears you had not time to finish — "anew 
course of oral catechetical instruction to the servants." How 
far the servants were permitted to listen to your daily lectures 
and services, and whether they enjoyed the oral instruction on 
other days than the Sabbath, is uncertain, since no mention is 
made of the suspension of labor on the plantations, except on 
Good Friday. However this may be, certain results are re- 
corded. You saw masters and servants standing side by side in 
the holy services of Passion week. Probably the church in 
which you officiated had no galleries, and hence when the ser- 
vices required the congregation to stand, you saw the masters 
and slaves standing on the same floor. Had you seen them sit- 
ting together in the same pews, we could better have understood 
their position, and should have shared your surprise. On Good 
Friday, all secular labor was suspended. This, of course, was 
not the effect of the oral instruction to the servants, but an act 
of civility on the part of the masters to the Bishop, who had 



13 



made the visit by particular request. On this day, you saw the 
« cleanly clad multitude thronging the house of prayer, to pay 
homage to a crucified Savior." It was far easier to see a large 
can* of slaves standing in the churoh, than to see the motive 
which brought them there. It is not to be supposed that, during 
the Bishop's visit, the slaves were told to throw down their 
hoes, and put on clean clothes, merely to spend Good hriday 
in dancing or roaming over the plantations. Whatever may 
have been the pietv of the " multitude," they were most un- 
questionably ordered to go to church, and a sound flogging 
would have been the fate of every truant. On the blessed 
Easter morn you beheld " the master with his goodly number 
of servants kneeling with reverent hearts and devout thanks- 
givings, to take the bread of life at the same altar." As no 
Protectant Episcopal church has as yet more than one altar or 
communion table, the communicants, as a matter of course, 
knelt at the same. As the service was performed by you, it was 
of course performed with rubrical correctness ; and, not being 
interrupt id with narratives of personal experiences and feelings, 
it is not very obvious how you made the discovery that the 
goodly n nnber of servants knelt with reverent hearts and devout 
thanksgivings. . 

You flatter yourself, sir, that if these sights had been wit- 
nessed by some of " our brethren from other lands" ^probably 
Northern and English Abolitionists), they would have changed 
their note of wailing over imaginary suffering into the jubilant 
chant, "Happy are the people that are in such a case ; yea, 
blessed are the people who have the Lord for their God ! ! 
Be assured, sir, that unless they very imperfectly understood the 
subject, no such exclamations would be prompted by their hearts 
nor escape from their lips. They would not regard as happy 
the masters who compelled a goodly number of their fellow 
Christians to toil for them without wages ; and the more easily 
to keep them in subjection, prevented the expansion of their intel- 
lect, and denied them the common rights of humanity, and par- 
ticularly that of searching the Scriptures. They would not 
regard the multitude of slaves happy, because excused from 
labor on Good Friday, while toiling under the lash every other 
week day in the year ; nor, finally, would they pronounce mas- 
ters and slaves happy, merely because they were seen to receive 
the communion on Easter Sunday. , 

Most true it is, that he who has the Lord for his God is 
blessed, whether he bleeds under the lash of the slave driver, or 
expires a martyr at the stake ; and equally true is it, that his 
blessedness affords no justification to his brother for treating 



14 



him as a beast of burden, or offering his life a sacrifice to reli- 
gious intolerance. No Christian wll deny the power of the 

bo°Xj mt ST e S thG gl00m > T P rison h0US3 of Southern 

mates g C i ° T^ *' f^ 7 ' md ^ itS miserable in- 
mates But the blessings of Grace, as of Providence, are ordi- 
narily bestowed m return for the use of appointed means • and 
where those means are withheld, or partially applied, or g ossly 
perverted other evidence may justly be required, that the slave 
has made the Lord his God, than the simple fact 'that he is seen 
to receive the communion in his master's church, and in his 
company. t m somewhat questionable whether 'your spiri 
would have been equally refreshed at the sight of a multitude 
of Presbyterian, Baptist, or Methodist slaves, receiving the 
communion Irom the hands of a minister destitute of Epis°cooal 
ordination ; or whether you would have been equally asLedof 
their blessedness. Yet you well know, sir, that in the choice of 

and ir ttrt;T d ,r ee , d the slayes are for the most P art l--ve 

and that, had the Scuppernong communicants been sent to 
auction on Easter Monday, they would each thenceforth have 
whipped m the place and manner directed by « the highest 

fcwf f Ut l ei : n Ch 7 ° heS ^ Umber their slavc communicants by 
thousands ; but profession is not principle ; and in all ao-es and 
countries, there has ever been a ready conformity to the reli- 
gion of the ruling despot. Where the slave makes no religions 
profession, the cause is for the most part to be found in the in- 
difference ot the master. 

The esoteric teaching on this subject is not calculated to in- 
spire very strong confidence in slave piety. In an account of 
the Intended Insurrection," published by the authorities of 
Charleston, 822 it is stated, that of those executed several 
had been class-leaders." « Jack Green was a preacher ; Billy 
palmer exceedingly pious, and a communicant of the church of 
his master; Jack Parcel , no less devout." The ensuing year, 
the Rev Dr. Dalcho, assistant minister of St. Michael's church 
Charleston, published a pamphlet in vindication of slavery, but 
had the decency to omit his name on the title-page.* Alludine 
to the late conspirators, he says : 

sniratoTsw; ^' ilh fG i lingS ? f ,h f d ? 6peSt "V* that some ° f the con- 
C " ?V Preachers, class-leaders, and communicants ; thus veri- 
Jto£e ruth of a remark which teachers have too of. n occas on 
to make, that THERE IS LITTLE confidence to BE PLACED IN the 
Reli gious Professions of keckoes. 1 speak generally Much ™. 

* Practical Considerations, founded on the Scriptures, relative to the 

Slave Population of South Carolina. By a South Carolinian. 



15 

mal excitement may be, and oftentimes its, produced, where but little 
real devotion is felt in the heart. I sympathize most sincerely with 
the very respectable and pious clergyman, whose heart must still bleed 
at the recollection that his confidential class-leader, but a week or two 
before his just conviction, had received the communion of the Lord's 
Supper from his hand. This wretch had been brought up in his pas- 
tor's family, and was treated with the same Christian attention as was 
shown to their children."* 

Says the venerable and Rev. Dr. Nelson, a native of Ten- 
nessee, and formerly President of Marion College, Missouri : 

" The concentrated recollection of thirty years furnishes me with 
three instances only, where I could say I have reason, from the known 
walk of that slave, to believe him or her a sincere Christian." 

The Rev. C. C. Jones, probably better acquainted with_ the 
religious character of the slaves than any other Southern minis- 
ter, says, in his sermon already quoted : 

"Of the professors of religion among them, there are many of 
questionable piety, who occasion the different churches great trouble 
in discipline, for they are extremely ignorant, and frequently are 
guilty of the grossest vices." 

After such facts and confessions, you cannot, sir, be surprised, 
should your brethren from other lands be a little sceptical 
about the " reverent hearts and devout thanksgivings" of the 
goodly number of the Scuppernong negroes. But, alas ! sir, 
there are indeed far weightier reasons than these facts and con- 
fessions, to justify such scepticism. __ 

The very peculiar character of that Christianity which is 
offered to the slaves is well calculated to insure its rejection by 
them. Love is the great motive, argument, and command of 
the Gospel. God is love. God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only begotten Son. We love God, because he first 
loved us. Love one another, so shall all men know that ye are 
my disciples. One is your Father, which is in heaven ; all ye 
are brethren. When we are cruelly and unjustly treated^ we 
know that we suffer in violation of the precepts of our religion, 
and we are taught to pray for the offender, that his sin may be 
forgiven. Far different is the religion offered to the slave. He 
is instructed that the common Father of All has authorized a 
portion of his children to convert the others into articles of 
merchandise. The favored children, moreover, are permitted to 
withhold from their brethren the revelation made by their 
Heavenly Father, and which he has declared is able to make 
them wise unto salvation. The slave also learns, by experience, 

* But the wretch was the slave of his pastor. 



16 

is — 



that to him is denied the marriage and the parental relations- 
blessed boons, expressly conferred by God upon others. While 
this religion calls on some to be diligent in business, that thev 
may provide for their families, he is informed that this same re- 
ligion requires from him unceasing and unrepinin" toil for the 
sole benefit of his happier brethren. A future tfe is hideed 
revealed to him and he is promised happiness in another world 
on certain conditions ; among which are, always, obedience to' 
his master, and refusal to escape from bondage. The slave is 
taught that those privations and sufferings which he endures 
and which outrage his moral sense, are in perfect accordance 
with the precepts of his religion; and that to pray for the for- 
giveness of his oppressor would be but to insult that Divine 
Majesty which clothed the oppressor with power, and author- 
ized him to use it in crushing his weaker brother 

Such is the Christianity presented to the slave-a religion 
which his own consciousness must tell him is partial, severe/and 
unjust nullifying in the case of the black man the holy and 
benevolent precepts it gives to his white brother, and sanctify- 
ing a system of cruelty and oppression, which every faculty of 
his soul tells him is wrono-. J J 

And by whom is this species of Christianity received, beyond 
the slave region ? Almost the whole of Christendom rejects 
it as spurious The wise and good of all countries abhor it. 
The bishops of the Church of England denounce it. Not a 
bishop at home, in a free State, dare give it his sanction. And 
yet it is supposed that the poor slave, who of all others has the 
mast reason to reject a religion which sinks him below humanity, 
will cordially embrace it ! Ji 

Not only is this religion necessarily repugnant to the natural 
moral sense of the slaves, but the very persons who preach it 
must be objects of their distrust and aversion. No minister ad- 
dresses the slaves on a plantation, but by permission of the mas- 
ter; nor is any slave ordinarily admitted to Christian ordi- 
nances but by the same permission, expressed or implied 
Hence the minister virtually addresses the slave as the agent of 
his master, and instead of letting the slave perceive that he 
sympathizes >n his sufferings, and laments and condemns his 
oppression, he labors to impress him with the belief that God 
Almighty sanctions the servitude beneath which he groans 
and requires from him a ready submission to it. Is it in 
human nature that such shepherds should be loved by tho 

loZlt\Pi m u n ^ th ° South , has Probably labored more zea- 
lously m behalf of the spiritual interests of the slaves than tho 



17 

Rev. C. C. Jones ; but, unhappily, he has labored as the agent 
of the masters and the supporter of human bondage ; and what 
has been his success ? Listen to his story, as related in the 
Tenth Report of the Association for the Religious Instruction 
of the Negroes in Liberty county, Georgia : 

" I was preaching," says he, " to a large congregation, on the Epistle 
to Philemon : and when I insisted on fidelity and obedience as Chris- 
tian virtues in servants, and upon the authority of Paul, condemned 
the practice of running away, one half of my audi en ce deliberately 
rose up and walked off ivith themselves; and those who remained 
looked anything but satisfied with the preacher or his doctrine. After 
dismission, there was no small stir among them ; some solemnly de- 
clared that there was no such Epistle in the Bible ; others, that it was 
not the Gospel; others, that 1 preached to please the masters; others, 
that they did not care if they never heard me preach again." — P. 24 

Had Mr. Jones been untrammeled by the theory of slavery 
and the interests of the masters, he would have preached a very 
different sermon, and experienced very different treatment. 
After reading the Epistle, he would have told his audience that 
the text left it wholly uncertain whether Onesimus was a slave 
or a hired servant ; that, in either case, the Apostle had no 
power to compel him to return to his master ; and that, of course, 
his return was wholly voluntary ; that, so far from being in dis- 
grace, or liable to arrest on his journey, he was sent by the 
Apostle as " a faithful and beloved brother," a messenger to a 
Christian church (Col. iv. 9) ; that, if he was in fact a slave, 
then the Apostle demanded his immediate emancipation, by re- 
quiring his master to receive him, " not now as a slave, but 
above a slave, a brother beloved." The preacher might then 
have pressed upon his hearers, from the injunctions of the 
Apostle, the duties of forgiveness and kindness. Such a ser- 
mon would have recommended Christianity to the slaves, and 
exposed the preacher to be lynched by the masters. 

In 1792-'93, a number of American citizens were held as 
slaves in Algiers, and by as valid and sacred a title as that by 
which any slave is held in North Carolina. Indeed, these 
American slaves were held by precisely the same title, the for- 
tune of war, as were a great portion of the Roman slaves, whose 
bondage you and Bishop Freeman insist was approved by Christ 
and his Apostles. These slaves, 105 in number, in a petition 
to Congress, declared : " We are employed daily at the most 
laborious work, without respect of persons, and shut up at night 
in two slave, prisons." What would have been the feelings of 
these slaves towards an English clergyman, in the pay of ihe 
Dey, who, with his permission, should have preached to them 



18 

from the Epistle to Philemon, urging upon them fidelity and 
obedience to their Algerine masters as Christian duties, and 
assuring them, on the authority of St. Paul, of the great sin 
they would commit in attempting to escape from their " slave 
prisons ?" 

Mr. Jones has prepared a catechism for the slaves. In this 
manual of religious instruction, they are asked, u Is it right for 
the servant to run away ; or is it right to harbor a runaway ?" 
To this question, the slaves are required to respond an emphatic 
"no." 

Is there a slave, is there a white man, who believes that the 
Rev. C. C. Jones, if, through some misfortune or violence, he 
should be reduced to bondage in Russia or Turkey, would not, 
in spite of his catechism, embrace the first favorable opportu- 
nity " to run away;" or, if he could not run away himself, that 
he would be restrained by scruples of conscience from harboring 
a fellow-countryman, who had partially succeeded in making his 
escape ? Yet the wretched slaves are required by their reli- 
gious teachers to believe that God requires them to remain 
voluntarily in a state of ignorance and degradation, and even to 
refuse their aid to their wives, children, and friends, who are 
endeavoring to recover their liberty ! Such a doctrine is alone 
sufficient to give the negroes a disgust to the religion of which 
they are assured it forms a part. And now let me ask, Who 
believes or acknowledges this doctrine, beyond the slave region ? 
Is there a minister of Christ, except among the slaveholders, 
who would so far expose his sacred character to public abhor- 
rence, as to betray a fugitive slave to the kidnappers ? Who 
thinks it a sin at the North or in Europe to harbor a runaway ? 
Who, at the North, except here and there a needy attorney, 
policeman, or a merchant ready to barter his character for 
Southern custom, is vile enough to carry into practice the doc- 
trine of Mr. Jones : s negro catechism, and bewray him that wan- 
dereth, or refuse to hide the outcasts, or to be a covert to them 
from the face of the spoiler ? 

Not only is Christianity presented to the slaves by its minis- 
ters in an odious and disgusting form, but these very ministers 
are perceived by the slaves to bo the agents of the masters, and 
to preach to "please them" and are themselves almost univer- 
sally owners of human beings, buying and selling men, women, 
and children. Is it possible that such men can be honored, and 
trusted, and beloved, by the slaves, as their spiritual teachers, 
friends, and guides ? 

But, alas ! Christianity is rendered still more repulsive to tho 
slave by the fact that not only do its teachers make merchan- 



19 

dise of their brethren in Christ, but that organized churches are 
not unfrequently 

" Christian brokers in the trade cf blood," 
appropriating the profits of the traffic to the support of the 
priest and the temple ! 

A fugitive slave told his friends at the North that he had 
ceased receiving the Lord's Supper in the church to which he 
had been attached, because the church had sold his brother to 
pay for their communion plate ; and " I could not bear," said 
he, " to go forward and receive the communion from vessels 
which were the purchase of my brother's blood." 

We have no proof of the truth of this anecdote, but we have 
most abundant evidence of its credibility. Says the Rev. J. 
Cable, in a printed letter of 20th March, 1846 : 

" I have lived eight years in a slave State (Virginia), and received 
theological education at the Union Theological Seminary near Hamp- 
den Sydney College. Those who know anything about slavery, know 
the worst kind in jobbing slavery — that is, hiring out slaves from year 
to year, while the master is not present to protect them. It is the in- 
terest of the one who hires them to get the worth of his money out 
of them, and the loss is the master's, if they die. What shocked me 
more than anything else, was the church engaging in this jobbing of 
slaves. The college church which I attended, held slaves enough to 
pay the pastor, Mr. Stanton, one thousand dollars a year ; of which 
the church members, as I understood, did not pay a cent. The slaves 
who had been left to the church by some pious mother in Israel, had 
increased so as to be a large and increasing fund. These were hired 
out on Christmas day of each year— the day on which they celebrate 
the birth of our Savior— to the highest bidder. These worked hard 
the whole year to pay the pastor $1,000, and it was left to the caprice 
of the employers whether they ever heard one sermon. Since the 
Abolitionists have made so much noise about the connexion of the 
church with slavery, the Rev. Elisha Balenter informed me the church 
has sold this property, and put the money into other stock. There 
were four churches near the college that supported the pastor, in whole 
or in part, in the same way, viz. : Cumberland church, John Kirk, 
pastor ; Briney church, Wm. Plummer, pastor (since Dr. P., of Rich- 
mond) ; Buffalo church, Mr. Cochran, pastor ; Pisgali church, near the 
Peaks of Otter, J. Mitchell, pastor." 

The Rev. Mr. Paxton, a Virginian, and once a slaveholder, 
states, in his " Letters on Slavery," that the church in Vir- 
ginia, of which he was pastor, owned seventy slaves, and that 
his salary was chiefly derived from the hire of their labor. 

In 1832, Mrs. Ann Pray, of Georgia, left a legacy of cer- 
tain slaves to the American Missionary Board of Commission- 
ers — a legacy very properly declined by the Board. 

" A prime gang of ten negroes, accustomed to the culture of 



20 

cotton and provisions, belonging to the Independent Church, in 
Christ Church parish," was advertised for sale in the Charles- 
ton Courier of 12th February, 1835. 

In the Savannah Republican, 23d March, 1845, C. O'Neal, 
sheriff, advertised eight slaves for sale for cash, to satisfy a 
mortgage in favor of " The Board of Directors of the Theolo- 
gical Seminary of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia." 

So it seems the Seminary loans its money on the security of a 
certain amount of human flesh, and this under the direction of 
the very Synod whose report " on the religious instruction of the 
colored population" we have already quoted. Deeply are these 
pious Christians exercised in their minds about the heathenism 
of their brethren whom they are selling for cash, to educate 
young gentlemen for the ministry ! 

The " Spirit of Missions" some time since informed its 
readers, that " the Bishop of Georgia, in his Montpelier Insti- 
tution, is testing the sufficiency of slave labor to support it." 
It is to be hoped Bishop Elliott will before long favor the pub- 
lic with the result of his interesting and very Christian experi- 
ment. 

In the Southern church, moreover, the desire for the salva- 
tion of the negroes is in entire subserviency to the supposed 
interests of the masters. The New Orleans Picayune of 16th 
August, 1841, has the following : 

" Chauncey B. Black was brought before Recorder Baldwin, charged 
with tampering with slaves. It was proved that he was seen con- 
versing with a number of them in the street; that he asked them if 
they could read and write, and if they would like a Bible. This was 
the amount of the testimony against him. In palliation of his conduct, 
it was shown that he was regularly appointed agent of the Bible So- 
ciety in New Orleans, to distribute the Bible to such as would accept 
of it. The society, however, disclaimed having the most distant inten- 
tion of giving the Scriptures to slaves ; and it was said Black had ex- 
ceeded his commission in offering it. But as it appeared to be a mis- 
inderstanding on his part, and not intentional interference with the 
peculiar institution, he was discharged with a caution not to repeat his 
offence." 

Now hear the New Orleans Presbytery, in their Report of 
1846 : 

" There are within the bounds of the presbytery at least 100,000 
colored persons, most of whom are slaves. It is a lamentable fact, 
that by far the greater part are famishing and perishing for the bread of 
life." 

With what ineffable scorn must the slaves regard such lamen- 
tations over their famine for the bread of life, from the lips of 



21 

men who have not the most distant intention of giving the Scrip- 
tures to slaves : 

The Southern Religious Telegraph had opened its columns 
to a series of papers in behalf of christianizing the slaves. Some 
of the Virginians became alarmed, and forthwith the obsequious 
editor announces : 

" At the suggestion of some of our fellow citizens, who regard the 
discussion of the relisrious instruction of slaves inexpedient at this 
time, we cheerfully comply with their wishes, and will discontinue for 
the present the publication of articles on the subject." 

Says the Georgia Conference Missionary Society, in its Re- 
port for 1838 : 

" Our Missions among the whites have shared in this season of re- 
freshing from the presence of the Lord. The missions to the slaves 
have not been distinguished by so great a multiplication of church 
members, chiefly because the mode of operation is essentially different. 
It is deemed imprudent to foster among the colored people those great 
excitements which minister so powerfully to the building up our so- 
cieties among the whiles." 

Here we have an avowal, that, from prudential reasons — that 
is, from regard to the security of slave property — the slaves 
have been deprived by these Methodist missionaries of certain 
auxiliaries, supposed to be highly conducive to salvation. 

In 1835, the slaveholders of Charleston, having sacked the 
post office, and riotously destroyed some anti-slavery papers 
found in it, called a public meeting, for the avowed purpose of 
controlling the freedom of the mail. The Charleston Courier, 
giving the particulars of the meeting, announced that 

"The clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending 
their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the 
impressive character of the scene." 

The sacrifice of decency in attending this lawless meeting, 
was not the only one which the Charleston clergy offered on the 
altar of slavery. The slave-holders resolved: 

"That the thanks of this meeting are due to the reverend gentlemen 
of the clergy in this city who have so promptly and so effectually re- 
sponded to the public sentiment, by suspending their schools, in which 
the free colo) ed population were taught; and that this meeting deem it 
a patriotic action, worthy of all praise, and proper to be imitated by 
the teachers of similar schools throughout the State." 

It is quite in character, that the Charleston slave-holders 
should deem it a patriotic act in the ministers of the Lord Jesus 
Christ to drive black children from their Sunday schools ; but 
what judgment will be formed of th jse pusillanimous clergymen 



22 

by Him who has commanded his servants not to fear what man 
can do unto them ? Most truly, says the Bishop of Oxford : 

" It is a time for martyrdom, and the American church has scarcely 
produced a single confessor." 

There is still another to be added to the formidable obstacles 
already enumerated, to the conversion of the slaves. Their 
very position compels them to live in constant violation of many 
of the imperative obligations of Christianity. 

The slave is a participator of that humanity with which the 
Savior clothed himself at his incarnation. As a man, there- 
fore, he is placed by God in various relations, imposing corre- 
sponding duties ; as a sou, he is bound to honor his parents ; as 
a brother, to love his kindred, and relieve their distresses ; as a 
husband, to cleave to his wife till parted by death ; as a father, 
to provide for the sustenance and education of his offspring. 
But the law of the land has nullified that of God, and insulates 
the slave from all the relations of humanity, and abrogates the 
obligations resulting from them. Yet the Southern priesthood, 
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, give their sanction to this 
law, reducing to chattels the very beings for whom He died. 
Well, indeed, has a foreign author remarked : 

" Whatever may have been the unutterable wickedness of slavery, 
in the West India Islands, there it never was baptized in the Redeemer's 
hallowed name, and its corruptions were not concealed in the garb ol 
religion. That acme of piratical turpitude was reserved for the pro- 
fessed disciples of Jesus in America." 

You flatter yourself, sir, that, could the Bishop of Oxford 
have witnessed the services at Scuppernong which you have de- 
scribed, his views of American slavery would have undergone 
such a total change, that he would have asked instant pardon of 
the American church, for rebuking her subserviency to this ter- 
rific institution. Having said nothing of the church that was 
not literally true, and substantiated by most abundant proof, the 
Bishop could have had no motive or excuse for asking par- 
don. So far from having his abhorrence of slavery diminished 
by the scenes on which you dwell with so much complacency, 
he would have found in them new proofs of the degeneracy of 
the church, and of the corrupting influence of human bondage. 

Willi what indignation would your good brother have wit- 
nessed the masters bringing their fellow-men to the house of 
prayer, kneeling with thorn at the Lord's table, partaking with 
them of the emblems of the Savior's body and blood, the next 
day driving them to the field as the ox to the furrow, and per- 
haps the day after tearing them from their wives and children. 



23 

and selling them to the dealer in human flesh, to be conveyed 
to distant markets ? 

Think you, sir, the Bishop would have felt very penitent for 
his condemnation of slavery, had he, on leaving Scuppernong, 
repaired to Wilmiugton, still in your diocese, and there recog- 
nised some of the Easter Sunday communicants among the 
manacled passengers described in the following letter ? 

"As I went on board the steamboat at Wilmington, I noticed eight 
colored men, handcuffed and chained togetJicr in pairs, four women, and 
eight or ten children — all standing together in the bow of the boat, in 
charge of a man standing near them. Coming near them, I perceived 
they were all greatly agitated, and, on inquiring, I found that they 
were all slaves who had been born and raised in North. Carolina, and 
had just been sold to a speculator, who was now taking them to the 
Charleston market. Upon the shore was a number of colored persons, 
women and children, waiting the departure of the boat. My attention 
was particularly arrested by two colored females, who stood together 
a little distance from the crowd, and upon whose countenances was 
depicted the keenest sorrow. As the last bell was tolling, I saw the 
tears gushing from their eyes — they were the wives of two of the men 
in chains. There, too, were mothers and sisters, weeping at the de» 
part u re of their sons and brothers ; and there, too, were fathers, taking 
the last look of their wives and children. My eye now turned to those 
in the boat, and, although I had tried to control my feelings amidst my 
sympathy for those on shore, I could conceal them no more, and found 
myself literally weeping with those that wept. I stood near them, 
when one of the husbands saw his wife on the shore wave her hand 
for the last time ; his manly efforts to restrain his feelings gave way, 
and, fixing his watery eyes upon her, he exclaimed, ' This is the most 
distressing thing of all — my dear wife and children, farewell!' Of 
the poor women on board, three of them had husbands whom they 
left behind. Sailing down Cape Fear River twenty-five miles we 
touched at the little village of Smithport, on the South side of the 
river. It was at this place that one of the slaves lived, and here were 
his wife and five children. While at work on Monday last, his pur- 
chaser took him away from his family, carried him in chains to Wil- 
mington, where he remained in jail. As we approached the wharf, 
a flood of tears burst from his eyes. The boat stopped but a moment, 
and, as she left, he espied his wife on the stoop of a house some rods 
from the shore, and with one hand, which was not in the handcuff, 
he pulled off his old hat, and, waving it towards her, he exclaimed, 
' Farewell !' After a few moments silence, conflicting passions seemed 
to tear open his breast, and he exclaimed, ' What have I done, that I 
should suffer this ? Oh! my wife and children — I want to live no 
longer !' " — Christian Advocate and Journal. 

And is this most accursed traffic in the sheep of your flock an 
" imaginary suffering ?" 

Not contented with lattding the blessedness of Southern 
slavery, you proceed to taunt Great Britain with her factory 



24 

system, and to sneer at your brethren of the mother church for 
riveting such a system on their land. A vast amount of sym- 
pathy is constantly expended by the dealers in human flesh on 
the English poor ; and he who, without compunction, sends a 
mother to market, or plows her back with the lash finds his 
bowels of compassion yearning over the " cruel oppressions" of 
a factory child on the other side of the Atlantic ! 

It was the declaration of the Almighty, in reference to his 
own peculiar people, " the poor shall never cease out of the 
land" — a prediction virtually repeated by our Savior, and as 
literally fulfilled in regard to every other land as it was in 
Palestine. No system of government, no form of religion, has 
ever caused the poor to cease out of the land. Much poverty, 
no doubt, springs from bad government and wicked wars ; but a 
far larger portion from the vice, improvidence, indolence, and 
misfortune, incident to humanity. Owing to the corruption of 
our nature, poverty often invites oppression ; which no Govern- 
ment, however paternal, can prevent. In our own land, we 
have armies of paupers, exclusive of nearly three millions of our 
fellow countrymen, who are reduced by law to absolute penury. 
Yet this is the country, above all others, in which extent of ter- 
ritory, cheapness of land, and demand for labor, should secure, 
if possible, a competency for all. Is it, then, sir, a matter of 
surprise, that poverty should abound in England, where a popu- 
lation, nearly equal to that of the whole United States, is crowd- 
ed into a space less than your own diocese ? Owing to British 
industry and enterprise, the wages of labor are higher in Eng- 
land than in any other part of Europe ; and, owing to the free- 
dom of the press and of the Government, the English poor are 
probably the least oppressed of any in the Eastern World. And 
yet, of all the paupers of Europe, Asia, and Africa, it is only 
over those of England that the slaveholders raise " the note of 
wailing." 

As you thought proper to taunt the Bishop of Oxford with 
" the cruel oppressions of the factory system," it might have 
been expected that you would specify the oppressions to which 
you refer, that it might be seen whether, like the abominations 
of North Carolina slavery, they were authorized by law, and 
sanctioned by Bishops, or proceeded solely from the cupidity 
and cruelty of individuals. 

It is. also to be wished, that you had condescended to con- 
trast the English and American factory systems, that we might 
know wherein they differ. Such a comparison would not pro- 
bably result as much to our credit as you suppose. The two 
systems differ — first, in the rr.te of wages, arising from the dif- 



25 

farence in the demand and supply of labor in the two countries ; 
and, secondly, in the paternal solicitude of the British Parlia- 
ment to protect juvenile operatives from the avarice of their em- 
ployers, and in the utter indifference of our republican legisla- 
tures on the subject. You speak of English churchmen helping 
to rivet the factory system on their land. It is to be regretted, 
sir, that you deal so largely in generalities, and are so averse to 
particular statements. How and when have English church- 
men riveted the factory system on their land ? Has any pres- 
byter of the established church lauded it as a divine institution, 
and received a mitre in return, through the influence of the cot- 
ton spinners ? Has any bishop, in a charge to his clergy, at- 
tempted to vindicate the system against the reproaches of the 
Americans, by pronouncing the sufferings of the operatives 
" imaginary ;" or has he represented a cotton mill as a little 
heaven upon earth, because labor was suspended in it on Good 
Friday, and because some of the hands partook of the sacrament 
on Easter Sunday ? 

It is true the English bishops, as members of the House 
of Lords, have participated in the enactment of laws relating to 
factories. How far such laws authorize the " cruel oppressions" 
to which you refer, you do not tell us ; but something of their 
character may be learned from the following official notice : 

" As all the clauses of the Factories Regulation Act being now in 
full operation, the inspectors of factories deem it expedient, in order 
to remove any doubts as to the employment of children subject to re- 
stricted hours of labor, to issue the following Notice : 

"1. No child under nine years of age can be employed in any cotton, 
flax, or wool factory. 

" 2. No child between nine and thirteen years of age can be em- 
ployed or even alloyed to remain in such factory, without the certi- 
ficate of a physician or surgeon, countersigned by a magistrate or an 
inspector of factories, certifying, in the form set forth in the 13th sec- 
tion, the strength and appearance of such child. 

" 3. No child between nine and thirteen years of age can be em- 
ployed in such factory, without producing weekly a schoolmaster's 
certificate, that the child has, for two hours at least, for six out of 
seven days of the week next preceding, attended his school, excepting 
in cases of sickness, to be certified in such manner as such inspector 
may appoint; and in case of any holyday, and in case of absence 
from any other cause allowed by such inspector, or by any justice of 
the peace in the absence of the inspector. 

" 4. No child between nine and thirteen years of age can be em- 
ployed or even allowed to remain in such factory longer than forty 
eight hours in any one week, and not more than nine hours in an) 
one day. 

" 5. No child under thirteen years of age can be employed m any 
silk mill more than ten hours in one day. 
2 



26 



a^ f n he ^ bove '. a " d all other provisions of the Factories Regulation 
Act together with all orders and regulations issued by the inspectors 
m their several districts, under the authority of this act mS be 
strictly observed, in the mills and factories subject to the said Z 

Leonard Horner. 

Thomas Jones Howard. 

Robert S. Saunders. 

,, ,,r T Inspectors of Factories. 

" Whitehall, June 22, 1836. 

It was, sir, exceedingly imprudent to provoke a comparison 
between the oppressions of the slave and the factory systems. 
Ihe oppressions of a system are of course such as the system 
authorizes. What is the power, sir, which the slave system au- 
thorizes you to exert over your slaves ? Chief Justice Hender- 
son of your own diocese, thus summarily answers the question : 

Ihe master has an almost absolute control over the body and 
mind of his slave. The master's will is the slave's will."* 
This surely, sir, is pretty ample authority to be confided, even 
to a Christian Bishop. But let us descend to particulars, and 
pursue the comparison which you have so rashly introduced— 
let us contrast the powers vested in you, by the laws of North 
Carolina, over your slave, with the powers over his operative 
vested by act of Parliament in the English manufacturer. 

1. You may with legal impunity offer your unoffending slave, 
whether male or female, any insult or outrage, however gross, 
not extending to life or limb. 

The manufacturer is as responsible in law for an outrao-e 
committed on his operative, as on any other person. 

2. You are restricted by law, under a penalty of two hun- 
dred dollars, from teaching your slave to read.— Statutes of 
North Carolina, 1830. 

The manufacturer is allowed by law to give his operatives any 
instruction they may please to receive ; but he can employ no 
child under thirteen years of age who has not at least two hours 
schooling a day for six days in the week. 

3. You may flog your slave at pleasure, with or without 
cause ; and if, instead of standing still under your lash, when 
ordered to do so, he retreats from you, you arc authorized by a 
solemn judicial decision, made in your diocese, to take up your 
gun and shoot iiiM.f 

m The manufacturer, for shooting his operative under similar 
circumstances, would be convicted of murder, and undoubtedly 
hung. 

* 2 Dcvereaux's North Carolina Reports, 543, 

t Case of the State vs. Man, ! lkv. Hop.' p. 263, N. Carolina, 1829. 



27 



4 You are permitted by law (Haywood's Manual, o$>5>, to 
keep your slave on one quart of com per day. 

The manufacturer feeds his operative by contract, or the lat- 

■ny religious instruction, and you may also compel him to re 
^it^r^^rcise no legal authority over the 

C T i SmIyfoId r y!u:-slave from seeing his wife and chil- 
dren, Ind may send l/m to market where and when you thmk 

VV °ThP manufacturer has no similar privileges 

7 Vr may, at your own will and pleasure, torment your 
R Hve bv scou&n*, by imprisonment, by dipping his ears by 
slave bj MW» y V b fastening an iron collar about 

„ifh hToodhounds ; ai' should he * *™ * *• hrut= 8> you 

to severe punishment absconds, and 

M Tr„»,/«*.,'o,« kM *i. rc^d to his opera- 

riU dd S" SouTotta oompet^tion thau such food and ra>- 

T™1 Salter is may he requaite to enahle him to labor. 
^T^n^eTZ obtain ^services of no optative ^ 
cept by contract ; and the wages, whether more oi less, are sucn 

- *? ^X^^etor of every « * Fgg* 
acquired by your slave, by his own industry ,. by gift, by devise 
oX accident. If he picks *P a sixpence m the street, it » 

Y ° V The manufacturer has no claim on his operative, except for 
A ^LThThas aieed to render for a certain compensation, 
^f °Ae cbudr "n ofV«. female slave are your property, and 

^^:^r^^^^ the children of his 



28 



to ^^S^RS^^^^^'S 09 ^^ 

fourteen in winter. 2 BrcvS™, gST a day in the summer > and 

wm not deny. He will not be raM enoulh o^Hp P ?P wl * h proofs of ^at h., 
alleged atrocities of the slave laws. Tonrevent I en S e the w " ter for proofs of the 
may be well to state, that, strict!,, ■, Wlwo r - howev er, a captious objection i 
to offer a reward for the murder of, W, la e S" ? la Y e - h oIder has not a 1 ? a M 

kii/sThn by tw ° J™*"- * ^ runs ^a^Snce^ 'ffirl ? Utlawo ? »*ft 
kills a hog or any animal f fch J . • conceals himself, and. to maintain life, 

In point of fact, it is believed these Tot *t~ Ila '-' wood '* Manual, p. 521. ' 

lawry ; „ , there the least reas'o, to believ^nat^e^ 311 -" offere / without an out- 

killing a slave, would, in North Carolina Si ,„ i on,ISS !°n of this formality. i n 

a few advertisements/from a rrrea „ ass '^ItC \ P' gal ani ™ a <iversion. We iive 

pose of showing the putrid stfte < f \ rhiin ■ f ™ m souther n Papers, for the fur 

"the "' 8 ^t T e,,fi ^^«c^X^•^^4 te, ■ These ad?^ 

in the journals of the day indicates t l,, t „ J ,'. and their voluntary publication 

the community as in accordant wi {J ^SS^S? 6 ' ^S 7 dJSCl ° Se are regarded bv 

J. P. Ashlord. in the Natchez (o ipr?? age and conventional propriety 
girl called Mary ; has a small ^carovt ,ier eve f'V 833 -'" Run ^"j^Spi 

MP v branded on her cA ^ ^d frehwiF ' a good manv teetl > missing. f h „ 
wonia^^^^S^r^d^f^f"; Jul >-' 1^'Kan awav a ne gro 

teen or seventeen "ears of Le° La"tX\ "V*? 5- " Ran a " a ^ a ™gn> girl six 

bo ? ; ,i„ D u *, SJK** iiS'B'^Sf Y™v '»■ '«"•-" «... .«,, , « gro 

engraven en It." ' ™ a """"' '"' »«* " '*«.» <% altar, „ ill, n ; Temper! 

the reward of one hundred doTlarV for I '" i "' 2d "member. 1886.-" I will s h e 

awa". m' "c^m^^i^r^'rf^i^^^-^e, U» Ju ,y. l8 38. "Ran 
his apprehension dead or al,e. st^«J^^£^b. fiEfi 

^C:Smte^ .".n..ary, ]8 33.-^a„ away, a 
to arrest bun, 1 will not bold „,„! »2 ,i, " ''; ken ' so that violence is necessary 
J. McDonald. ,n the Apaffl&la oSftf'T 11 *'* S"" 1 ? *** **»«*«*&*?• 
away slaves and offers one lu,,,, e u ( fiA do ll'r -7' l84 '- Bd ™ rti *« three run- 
three, or fifty for cither one." * ° llars to anv one who will kill tub 



2& 



«r, that ?ou have given your episcopal sanction to slavery 
"\t ex sts at the present day." Tta, in its most limited 
sense, means slavery as at present established by law. And 
now sir, will you please to tell ns what are the abuses of a legal 
3em which takes away an innocent man's liberty renders him 
a P ece of animated merchandise, deprives him of all volition, 
Places him entirely at your will, denies him all the frui s of Ins 
Lbor, divests him of the character of a son a husband, and a 
fathe , and utterly debars him from the pursuit of his own hap- 
piness'^ If in all this there is none other than " imaginary suf- 
fering," do let us know what you consider the » cruel oppressions 

'wW* and corrupting would be your pow- 
er over your slave even were it intrusted to none other but a 
StoHT Reverend Father in God ; but, alas! the power you 
possess is, in your diocese, a vendible commodity ; and ^ any vile 
orutal infidel, may, for a little money, or by virtue of a gift or 
devise, acquire the same tremendous legal prerogatives over his 

^ slave^ b^ntd^nTnSLion so evidently enjoying the 
Divine sanction, that it is presumption to pronounce it wrong, 
it must be a good institution, and Christian benevolence mut 

2 us to labor for its extension. This duty is indeed zeal- 

3 discharged at present by our Southern brethren but under 
^exoteric plea of « extending the area of human freedom » 
But why mask with a he a work of love and mercy, which God 

aP Care considerations connected with the efforts of the 
Southern clergy to sustain slavery, which they would do well to 
ponder : If the condition of the slave be, as most of them con- 
fess it is, generally unfavorable to religious faith and personal ho- 
liness then* there is danger that, at the great day of account the 
hlood of souls will be found on the skirts of those who have 
striven to iustify and to perpetuate that condition. 

Every man, without exception, when he makes the case his 
own, and examines it solely by the light of nature , pronounces 
slavery a sin and a curse. Now, it is very possible that many 
who Jay be convinced, by the labors of yourself and others that 
slaverv is sanctioned by the Gospel, may also arrive at the con- 
clusion that a religion, thus outraging the moral sense ^planted 
in the human heart by the Cr eator, cannot proceed from Him. 

* Said Mr. Fries, on the Floor of Congress, in reference to a southern 
member who had at empted a biblical vindication of slavery : I wish it to 
Tfet ncTlyVnderstood'by my constituents and the country ip it (A mencjn 
slavery) is proved to be a divine institution, sanctioned by the word c. uoa, 



30 



A portentous infidel philanthropy is rife in the land, false 
and delusive in its professions, and tending in its consequences to 
anarchy and misery. Founded not on the love of God, and 
obedience to his commands, but on wild abstract political theo- 
ries, it pretends to seek the happiness of mankind by means which 
can have no influence in purifying the heart, and cheeking the 
progress of vice. Those who watch the signs of the times! not 
trom the retirement of their studies, but amid the busy haunts 
of men know that the conduct of many of the clergy, have given 
to this spurious philanthropy a mighty and most disastrous im- 
pulse.* They are constantly seen tything mint, and anise, and 
cummin, and all manner of herbs, while mercy and justice, so far 
as regards the colored population, are apparently utterly disre- 
garded by them. The public has witnessed a reverend assem- 
bly of divines discussing day after day the sinfulness of marry- 
ing the sister of a deceased wife, and at last deposing from the 
ministry a brother who had committed the offence. ° Yet had 
this same brother bought another man's wife, used her as his 
beast of burden, torn from her her children as they became fit for 
market, and finally disposed of her to some trafficker in human 
flesh, no ecclesiastical censure would have fallen upon him, and 
he would have been freely welcomed to the pulpits of the very 
men who deposed him We have had pastoral admonitions 
against dancing, and sermons in abundance in favor of human 
bondage ; nay, Right Reverend Fathers in God proclaim, that 
no man nor set of men in our day, unless they can produce a 
new revelation from Heaven, are entitled to pronounce slavery 
wrong," and that "slavery as it exists at the present day is 
agreeable to the order of Divine Providence." We have Bible 
Societies for supplying the destitute, and our churches and halls 
resound with eulogiums on the sacred volume, but scarcely a 
solitary minister at the South is known to suggest, that possibly 

I am an infidel ; but gentlemen must pardon me, If I do not adopt their 
construction of the Bible on this point." 

* This truth is admitted and deplored in a late publication bv the Rev 
Mr. Patton of Hartford, Conn., entitled, " Pro-Slavery Interpretations of 
the Bible productive of Infidelity." Says the Rev. Author, '-Infidels pro- 
fess to go for a reformation in morals, and Ihey boldly contend that Chris- 
tianity is the chief obstacle in the way of success. They declare that the 
church and the Bible are corrupt on the score of morals, and that so far from 
an argument being derived from that quarter in favor of Christianity the 
very reverse is true ;" and he quotes the following avowal made by an in- 
fidel at a recent convention of free-thinkers in New York- " 1 have done 
with the old arguments against Christianity, and have adopted a more effi- 
cient plan Now, r work altogether through the moral reformations of the 
day, and through them attack religion, and fino 1 can accomplish more 
Inan by any other means." 



31 



the laws which virtually forbid one half of the population o 
read the Bible, may not be acceptable to its dmne author, while 
the Bible Society of the largest city in the South disclaims all 
intention of giving Bibles to slaves. Great discussions as well as 
heats are excitedly the question whether the .word bapHze or 
immerse, shall be inserted in Bibles intended for Heathen in 
As a but the most profound apathy is ev need on the que s ion 
whether any Bible at all shall be given to the "nation of heathen 
in our very midst ?» Missionaries are sent to the ends of the 
earth, but" to .three millions of our own countrymen groaning in 
bondage, and sunk in ignorance is given only a little oral in- 
struction," and of that little, no small portion is confined to the 
duty of obedience, and the sin of running away. 

Much is said of the importance of a learned ministry and con- 
tributions are solicited from the pious, to found and maintain 
Theological Seminaries. Yet no sooner does a candidate tor 
Holy orders apply for the instruction thus provided, than 
R 6 /erend and Right Reverend Trustees proceed to inspect the 
tincture of his skin, and unless it rises to the orthodox standard, 
the door of the Seminary is shut in his face. We have m cer- 
tain quarters, line upon line, and precept upon precept, on the 
necessity, the importance, the dignity of apostolic succession 
But when this « Heavenly gift of ministerial commission, is 
borne by an ambassador of Christ not colored like themselves 
Bishops and Presbyters are seen treating the « heavenly gift 
with contumely, rarely if ever admitting the possessor into their 
pulpits, and scornfully and lawlessly refusing him a seat in the 
council of the church. - 

We have among us, a poor, ignorant pe rsecuted, but unoi- 
fending people. They are the least of Christ's brethren, and 
as such, are specially commissioned by Him to receive m his be- 
half the tokens of our love andgratitude. Are we taught by our 
Pastors thus to regard them ? Does the noisy demagogue, 
prating about equal rights and universal suffrage, find no apolo- 
gy for°gmng the lie to his professions, and trampling upon hi 
colored fellow citizens, in the conduct of the church herself ? Will 
those who drive from the schools of the prophets, youths anxi- 
ous to qualify themselves for the service of our common Lord, 
venture to rebuke the inhumanity of the proprietors of our stage 
coaches, our packets, and our railroads for excluding from the* 
conveyances, these unhappy people, however decent their de- 
partment, and however urgent their business? The Jews despised 
the Samaritans, and were too proud to receive at their hands 
even a cup of water. But the Savior disregarding an unholy 
although popular prejudice, eat and drank and lodged with them , 



32 

declared to them his divine mission, and in his inimitable para- 
ble, selected one of them as an illustration of the great law of 
love, to the condemnation of the proud and heartless but ortho- 
dox Priest and Levite. 

^ Surely it is not surprising that the efforts of so large a por- 
tion of the christian ministry to sanctify Slavery and Caste, 
should give great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blas- 
pheme, and to His friends for grief and perplexity. No small num- 
ber of those friends, failing to make due allowance for the frailty 
of our fallen nature, and forgetting the trials arising from the de- 
pendence of the clergy on popular support, have rashly and weak- 
ly imagined,that the influence of the church is necessarily adverse 
to an enlarged and practical application of the benevolent precepts 
of the Gospel. Hence they have unhappily indulged the vain ex- 
pectation that they could cherish more freely the benign im- 
pulses of Christianity when released from the restraints of eccle- 
siastical organizations. Such men, by gradually neglecting the 
appointed means of grace, have made shipwreck of "their faith, 
and listening to the voice of the charmer, and deluding them- 
selves with the belief that they were doing God service, have 
united with demagogues, scoffers, and infidels in unholy and chi- 
merical schemes of expansive benevolence. 

It may well be questioned, how far those who by the most 
solemn vows have dedicated themselves to the service of the 
sanctuary, can lawfully confine their time and labor to the re- 
moval of any one moral or political evil. They are to declare 
the whole counsel of God, and to watch over and feed the flocks 
entrusted to their charge. But the ministers of Christ are faith- 
less to their high and holy mission, when in the name of their 
master, they give their assent to injustice, and cruelty, and op- 
pression ; and by their own example, teach their people to despise 
the poor and helpless. The great head of the church has warned 
us against that fear of man which bringeth a snare, and demands 
that his ambassadors shall deliver his message of mercy and love, 
regardless alike of the displeasure of such as are in high places, 
and of the scoffs and clamor of the godless multitude. The 
tree is known by its fruits, and that is not the religion of the 
Gospel which fails to inculcate glory to God, and peace and 
good will to men. 

WILLIAM JAY. 
December, 1846. 



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